The Painted Desert Tribune has received an $8,200 Startup + Innovation Grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation to support the newspaper’s expansion into multimedia journalism, including video, livestreaming and other digital coverage aimed at better serving communities across the region.
The grant program was created to support Arizona news organizations working to launch new projects, strengthen community connection and test new approaches to local journalism. For The Tribune, the funding will help build on its work as a rural newsroom serving Holbrook, Winslow and surrounding communities, where access to consistent local news coverage remains limited.
One of the main goals of the project is to develop local sports livestreaming, particularly for high school athletics. For years, radio helped connect residents to local games, giving families, alumni and community members a way to follow their teams even when they could not be in the stands. As local radio options have disappeared or become less available in the region, that coverage gap has grown.
The Tribune hopes to help close that gap by building the capacity to livestream games and create related sports coverage that keeps local athletes, schools and communities visible. The project is not intended to replace the experience of attending games in person, but to expand access for grandparents, working parents, former residents, military families and others who still want to follow local teams from wherever they are.
In addition to sports, the Tribune plans to use the grant-supported project to strengthen its broader multimedia coverage of local government, schools, community events and public-interest stories. The goal is to make more local events available to readers and viewers while continuing the newspaper’s regular print and online reporting.
The project reflects a larger effort to adapt rural journalism to the way people now consume news, without losing the local focus that small communities depend on. For The Tribune, the grant will help build long-term capacity to document more of what is happening in Holbrook, Winslow and the surrounding communities and to make sure the region is not left out of the future of local news.
